TO MARY
(on her objecting to the following poem, upon the
score of its containing no human interest]
i
(For vipers kill, though dead)[1] by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,5
May it not leap and play as grown cats do.
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
ii
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,10
Because it cannot climb the purest sky.
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,15
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
iii
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;20
The watery bow burned in the evening name.
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way—
And that is dead.—O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
iv
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well30
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
v
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,35
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.' 40
- ↑ dead] deaf cj. A. C. Bradley, who cps. Adonais 317.